


It Feels Like -

by eiqhties



Series: It Looks Ugly, but It's Clean [1]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Magical Realism, Mental Health Issues, Telekinesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 17:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8722900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eiqhties/pseuds/eiqhties
Summary: Everything in the room is floating when Sonja gets to Even's house





	

Everything in the room is floating when Sonja gets to Even’s house.

She thinks she should be surprised, but can’t bring herself to react anymore. Staring up at the black hole of despair in the middle of Even’s ceiling, she feels nothing. There’d been a time when she would have thought this was incredible. Amazing. Breath taking.

Now the only thing that takes her breath away is the massive sigh she heaves.

“Even,” She says.

“Don’t,” He snaps back at her. He’s sitting in the corner of the room on the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest.

Sonja had found that incredible once too. Found it amazing how such a tall person, someone designed to take up space could make themselves so small. Now, she looks down at him, and still feels nothing.

She wonders how long she’s been feeling nothing.

“Stop taking this out on me,” She tells him. “This isn’t _my_ fault.”

He doesn’t reply, but she can see the way his hands tighten on his knees, the whiteness spreading through his fingers as the skin is stretched; tension reads in all lines of his body. “You don’t tell people things,” She says then, unable to stop herself from pressing it further, further, “It’s you that brings all this upon yourself.”

She wonders how long it will take until he snaps. Until he gets angry.

She wonders if this will be one of the days when he _does_ get angry, or if it’ll be a day when he’s just sad. A day when all he does is look at her, eyes wide with unshed tears. Face twisted in self-hatred.

He has so much of that.

She remembers, back in the beginning, things used to explode in his wake, slam into walls and smash into pieces. She remembers how he’d stand there wordless in the middle of it all, just a kid in the eye of a storm, watching as everything he loved would crumble apart.

She remembers, the first time she’d really understood what it was like to be him, how much he hated himself. They’d been fifteen, and Even had been clutching a camera with a smashed lens, smoke pouring from the inside out.

There’d been tears in the corners of his eyes.

“What happened?” She’d asked him, quietly, softly.

She’d always been soft with him, back then. Always been quiet. She used to try to be the sunrise for him; quiet, steady, dependable.  

“The footage was bad,” He’d said, back then. Still clutching the camera. He’d seemed soft then, too. Gentle with his words, scared to touch her. Scared to hurt her.

Maybe him becoming brave is what ruined them. Maybe they needed to be scared of each other to stay together. Maybe she shouldn’t still want to kiss him, still want to pull him in. She feels nothing, but she can’t let him go, either.

Maybe this is why he likes Isak, now. Maybe Isak is softer. Maybe he’s less like a sunrise, more like the sun itself. Maybe he burns Even when he touches him. Maybe he’d be able to let Even go.

“You’re trying to control me,” Even says, now. He’s not even looking at her; he’s looking at the wall in front of him. His hands are still clenched on his knees, and he’s still curled up; small, small boy. “Stop trying to control me.”

Above them, the furniture starts rotating slightly faster. Sonja eyes it, warily, but otherwise doesn’t leave the room. She’s dealt with worse before. She’ll deal with worse again.

“Isak needs to know,” She tells him.

Even’s jaw clenches, his eyes tighten. She looks at the sharp bones of it, the shape of his face. She loved him once. Loves him now, maybe. Enough to kiss him and hold him and go through all this shit for him.

“Isak needs to know, Even,” She says again.

He smiles, just slightly, the tiniest curling of his lips at the corners. It looks sarcastic, unreal. He looks up at her, meets her in the eye, “What does Isak need to know, Sonja?”

With Even, sometimes it’s hard to know what he’s saying. Sometimes, in the beginning, he would do it on purpose; he was always so much better at English than her, and he’d talk whole sentences in it, leaving her feeling stupid and slow and trying to catch up. Sometimes he speaks in French.

Sometimes, though, even when he’s speaking Norwegian he’s not properly speaking to her.

She looks at him for a while, quietly. “What are you asking me?” She says.

Above them, the furniture stops spinning. She looks at it, in surprise; it seems counterproductive for Even to be calming down, and she can’t figure out it it’s intentional or not. She glances back down at where Even is sitting; from the smile on his face, it was.  

“You asked,” He says. “You never ask me anymore. You never care anymore,” He’s slumped his head back, looking up at her almost lazily. If she didn’t know him, didn’t understand him so well, she wouldn’t be able to see the lack of give in his shoulders. The careful way he positions his body. “In the start, you always cared. Always wanted to know what I meant, if it was English, French, Norwegian, you’d still want to know what I was saying,” He looks away from her, his eyes back up at the furniture. He waves his hand, lazily, and his bed sinks back down to the floor, gently, softly, landing in the middle of the room.

She watches it, silently.

“You stopped wanting to know about me,” Even mutters quietly, half under his breath. All the furniture is falling now, sliding quietly back into place in Even’s room, until you’d never be able to tell it was floating at all.

Sonja feels like there’s ice in her throat.

“You think I don’t care,” She says. Her voice is coming out funny; cracking on words.

Even shrugs. “No,” He says, slowly. “I think you don’t _want_ to care. That’s almost worse.”

She puts a hand over her mouth, looks at him. He looks at her. She thinks about the last time she kissed him, at Emma Larsen’s party. He’d been tall, and smiling, and she’d been a bottle of wine deep. The two of them had still been chasing sunsets, that night.

“Isak needs to know,” She whispers once more.

Even pushes himself to standing. He’s tall again, now. Long and stretched out and he looks so sure of himself. She wonders how he can be so lost and still smile at her like that. She wonders if she hates him for it.

“Isak needs to know what?” He asks.

“That you’re sick,” She whispers.

Even laughs, tilts his head to the side. “You can’t say it, can you?”

“Can you?” She asks him.

“I’m mentally ill,” He says. “I’m fucked up. I’m sick. I’m depressed. I’m a mess. I’m the worst thing that ever happened to you, to him, to anyone. Right?” Even’s head is still tipped to the side; his eyes are clear, open. The smile is still on his face.

She doesn’t have to wonder anymore; she does hate him for it.

“You’re not the worst thing that ever happened to me,” She says. It chokes out of her throat.

He shakes his head, laughs again. His mouth is so lovely, curves, so pretty. His hands slide out so that they’re straight in front of him, barricading himself away from her.

“I should be,” He says.

They stand there. The two of them, just looking at each other.

There’s so many years between them, so many explosions.

“Talk to him,” She says, again.

Then she leaves.

*

 

Isak orders a black coffee, and clutches it in between his two palms, close to his face. The steam from it rises in tendrils, curling into the air and disappearing into nothing. She follows them for a while, before looking at Isak and smiling deeply at him.

To his credit, he smiles back instantly. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his limbs, but his smile is confident, it sits well on his face, upper lip twisting attractively. Even coupled with his discomfort, he’s gentle to look at, easy on the eye. A breaking wave.

She knows Even, knows what it is about Isak Valtersen that drew his eye.

“Hello,” She says to him.

“Hey,” He says back. His hands curl further around the mug, but otherwise he seems content to sit in silence with her. Despite obvious trepidation, he doesn’t push her. He’s willing to let her lead the conversation.

This, she finds irritating. She’s so used to Even fighting her on everything, now, that Isak’s willingness to let her start the conversation feels like just as much of a trap.

Isak takes a sip of his coffee, and his nose wrinkles slightly. She wonders if he even likes black coffee, or if he just ordered it in a misguided attempt to appear more sophisticated. She childishly hopes it’s the latter.

“Are you wondering why I asked you here?” She says.

Isak blows across the surface of his coffee, and then takes a deeper drink of it. This time, his nose doesn’t wrinkle, rather; his face seems to set in a happier expression.

A genuine fan of black coffee, then.

“Sort of yes,” Isak says. “Sort of no,” He smiles, puts the mug down, looks right at her. His eyes are sharp, and he looks older than he is. “I know that Even’s not telling me things. I’m younger, but not by much. Not enough to make me stupid.”

She’s surprised, her memories of him from the other times she met had him as quiet, fading into the background.

She wonders what happened between then and now. Wonders if it was Even’s attention that allowed him to grow out like this, or something else. An amalgamation of things. She wonders why it matters so much to her.

“I could tell you what Even’s not,” She says.

Isak looks down at the table, his right hand is tracing the patterns of circles into the wood, and his mouth tips up into a wonky smile. He glances back up at her, meets her eyes again. “Even says you’re trying to control me,” He tells her. “He says that you control him, try to tell him what to feel.”

“I’m not. I don’t-” She starts. Then stops, thinks about it.

She’s known Even a long time. Long enough to read his facial expressions, long enough to know his moods. She was also there the other day, when the bed was floating, and Even was telling her that she never listens anymore.

She wonders when she stopped listening.

“I don’t mean to,” She settles for.

Isak blinks. His eyelashes are long against his cheeks, and when he sits back against the chair, he smiles at her again. “I don’t think Even means to not tell me things, either,” He says. “At least, not maliciously. I don’t think he’s a bad person.”

“He’s not,” She says. He isn’t.

He told her about Isak, straight away. He told her about the floating, the explosions.

His illness.

“So,” Isak says. His coffee is almost gone, now, and she doesn’t know when he had time to drink it that fast. “This thing, that Even’s not telling me,” He’s drawing circles again, he looks more nervous. “Do I need to know about it?”

“Yes,” She says, instantly. He doesn’t just need to know about it; he _deserves_ to know about it. Isak Valtersen is young and soft and everything she no longer feels. He makes Even smile in ways she can’t anymore, makes Even settle in ways that she was never able to.

She wonders why that feels like nothing more than a failure. Wonders why losing Even feels more like losing a project, like losing something she was working on.

No wonder Even wants out. She’s been doing this whole thing so wrong, so messed up. No wonder Even thinks she’s controlling. Maybe she is.

Isak chews his bottom lip, the circles on the table get bigger. “Hm,” He says, he looks thoughtful.

His mouth opens, as if he’s going to say something else, when his phone buzzes, vibrating the small coffee table that’s between the two of them. It’s screen up, and when Sonja looks down at the table, she can see _Even Kosegruppa_ lighting up the screen, texts coming in.

Even never texts her anymore, and her heart thumps, strangely out of time with the rest of her body.

Isak doesn’t notice the way her face must be twisting. He’s too busy looking down at his phone; his whole face has opened out. He looks so happy it’s almost sore to look at, like staring directly into the sunlight.

“Can it wait?” He says, picking up his phone.

It can’t, not really. Even should have told Isak weeks ago, months ago. Should have said _sometimes I make things float_ and _I can’t keep my own head tied to the Earth, either_. Even should tell Isak that he’s not well, that he has weeks when he can’t get out of bed. Even should tell Isak that sometimes he’ll be mean. Sometimes he’ll say things he doesn’t actually think, and think the things he won’t actually say.

Isak should know that Even is difficult. That he’s not violent, but he’s _angry_. There’s something simmering underneath, something broken and smoking. Like the camera, from all those years ago.

“The footage was bad,” Even had said.

Isak needs to know that sometimes the footage will be bad. Sometimes, looking at Even will be like looking at still frames instead of a whole movie. Isak needs to know all of these things straight away. It can’t wait, because otherwise Isak will find out like Sonja found out. Otherwise, Even will snap at Isak directly, Even will break Isak directly.

Isak is still so soft.

She’s quiet for too long. She must be, because Isak’s not looking at his phone anymore, he’s looking at her, eyebrows pinched, frowning.

“Sonja?” He asks. “Can it wait?”

“Ask him about floating,” She says. Then she pushes herself away from the table. “I’ll see you around, Isak,” She says.

“See you around,” Isak says back, quietly.

He doesn’t watch her go. She doesn’t know why she wanted him to.

*

“You talked to him,” Even says. Behind him, the branches of a tree rattle. One of them, at the very top, cracks off. She wants to flinch away from him, but she tells herself to stand her ground.

“Even,” She says. “I didn’t tell him anything.”

Even narrows his eyes. “You told him to ask me about floating.”

“I didn’t tell him what about floating.”

Around Even, a weightless, invisible wind is picking up. Nowhere else in the park are leaves moving, but around Even they’re circling. It makes him look even less real than he normally does. She shuts her eyes, tired. She wishes that he’d stop. She wishes that he was easier to be around.

She wishes that she didn’t still think about kissing him, sometimes. Wishes that she didn’t still feel _something_.

Before Even, Sonja never knew that feeling nothing could be feeling something, too.

“This is who I am,” Even says. She opens her eyes, the leaves are moving in patterns, now. A star, and then a heart, and then a triangle. “This is a part of me. The _floating_. It’s not just floating though, is it?”

As he speaks, one of the leaves goes on fire. Then another. Then another, until all that’s left of what Even just did is a small pile of ash on the grass.

Sonja stares at it.

“It scares you,” Even says.

There’s ice in her throat, again. A lump. She wants Even to stop. She wants him to control himself. She wants him to be the same, but different. Him, but not all him.

“You only like it because it makes you feel like you’re in one of your movies,” She whispers.

Even’s laugh is startlingly loud.

“ _Like_ it?” He says, spreading his arms wide. He sounds angry, his mouth twisted all wrong at the edges, his eyebrows pulled in. “I hate it! I hate everything about it. You _know_ that I hate it. I hate being ill, and I hate that I wake up in the middle of the night and my hands shake and my throat gets clogged. I hate that I still smash lightbulbs sometimes. That I didn’t watch horror movies for years because of the time I unspooled the video when I jumped, I hate that –”

Leaves are gathering again. She holds out her hands.

“ _Stop_ ,” She says.

The leaves fall. Even stops speaking.

He licks his lips, takes a deep breath in. “I hate that I thought you were the only one that could stop it,” He says. It’s quiet, now. Not even a wind is blowing around them. “I hate that it got to the point where it didn’t feel like you were stopping the bad stuff, it just felt like you were stopping _me_.”

“I didn’t mean to,” She tells him. She thinks she might be crying.

“Do you believe that?” He asks her, and it’s soft, but she knows what he means.

“I don’t know,” She says. “I don’t think I did.”

He nods, and slumps down, so that he’s sitting on the grass of the park, arms laid out so that he’s lying back, leaning on his elbows. Sonja looks down at him for a while, before moving to sit beside him. There’s still space between them, but somehow it feels smaller than it has in months, years.

She could lean her head on his shoulder, if she wanted. Like they used to.

She doesn’t, but she thinks she could. Like the kisses at parties, like the way his hands used to fit into her hair. Like the way there’d been something good, once, back before she got confused about helping and hurting. Back before Even started suffocating.

“Does Isak help?” She asks.

Even waves his hand, and somehow, from somewhere, a daisy appears in the centre of his palm. He looks down at it and smiles.

“Yeah,” He says. He looks at her, smiles. It hits all the corners of his face. “He does.”

“Are you going to tell him?” She asks, then.

Even looks down at the flower in his hand. Twisting it, right, and then left. It’s strange, she thinks again, how such a tall person can make himself so small.

“I think so,” He whispers. “I want to.”

“Good,” She tells him. “I’m glad. You deserve it, Even.” She reaches out, touches his arm, strokes her hand down it once, soft, gentle. Calming. “Isak is a good guy, you know. He’ll sort you out.”

Even looks up again, the smile is still there. He looks like summer, like growth. He looks like someone she forgot existed. Like the boy she first fell in love with, all over again. Born anew. “He doesn’t need to sort me out,” He tells her. “I’m going to do that myself.”

“That’s good too,” She says. Then, “I’m sorry, Even. Sorry I was so. You know. So wrong,” She tells him, looking at the daisy sitting in the palm of his hand.

He looks at it as well. Then, slowly, carefully, he leans forwards, tucks it behind her right ear.

“It’s okay,” He says. “You weren’t wrong. Just. Different. You’ll get it right soon.”

“Roll credits?” She asks him. He laughs.

“Roll credits,” He tells her.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so there's a few reasons I wrote this. The first is because I spent a whole day with the song "Floating" by the Southern Irish band Jape stuck in my head. The second is because Phil Kaye's spoken word poem, "Repetition" has the line, _I remember the bed just... floating_ to begin with, and it's always stuck with me. The final reason I wrote this is because sometimes it's hard knowing someone with a mental illness. Sometimes you don't know what to do. Sometimes you make all the wrong choices.  
>  I've been Even, I've been Isak and I've been Sonja in this fic. I didn't want to villanise anyone in Skam, because I think the whole point of Skam is that no one's ever really the villian (Except Nikolai, who can Get Fucked). Mainly, it's just a bunched of messed up kids making messed up decisions. 
> 
> This fic has a playlist, btw:  
> 1\. Floating - Jape  
> 2\. How do I Breathe - Mario  
> 3\. R.I.P 2 My Youth - The Neighbourhood  
> 4\. Water Me - FKA Twigs  
> 5\. Secrets - The Weeknd  
> 6\. Waves - Portuagal. The Man  
> 7\. Yeah, I Said It - Rihanna  
> 8\. Pilot Jones - Frank Ocean  
> 9\. Embrace the Martian - Kid Cudi  
> 10\. Drugz - Willow 
> 
> As always, y'all can hmu/shout at me on tumblr @[eiqhties](http://eiqhties.tumblr.com)


End file.
